Barkley says if you get your dreams, you kill our dreams. And I’m sure Spencer sees that as “nature” “survival of the fittest” “competition, mannn” *more co-opting of evolutionary rhetoric as justification

The slate article tagline is that the issue is thinking testosterone is the way to power.

Do we know for sure what testosterone is linked to? Is the only definite thing sex drive? If so, that seems like an important part of the sex as conquest narrative… something about the most base-line thing a man conquers is a woman in sex, somehow that is the seed that spurs all the societal level conquering/dominating/colonizing? Idk… Testosterone Rex will be so helpful for this part though

-Effective self control, including resisting temptation, is three fold– in a sort of feed-back loop– and the failure of any of these three parts can lead to self control being undermined.
-The three parts are Standards (ideals, goals, states of mind), Monitoring (comparing current state of self to Standard), and Operate, or The Capacity to Change (can you override the internal processes).
-These mechanisms are depleting, although are renewable resources.
-Success at these mechanisms facilitates delay of gratification (you’re picturing your future Standard), resist acting on impulses,

Alcohol has been shown to contribute to failure of self-control in nearly every domain in which people control their behavior (see Baumeister et al. [1994] for review). One explanation is that alcohol intoxication makes people stop monitoring their behavior. Hull (1981) showed that alcohol reduces people’s attention to themselves, and self-focused attention is a vital part of monitoring oneself for the sake of self-regulation (see Carver and Scheier 1981, 1982). Drunken people stop keeping track of their spending, the wisdom of their comments, their eating, their smoking, and even of their drinking itself—and so the inner controls that typically restrain these behaviors are undermined.

People tempted by chocolate ate much more chocolate than a non-temptation control-group in a subsequent taste test

^ that one is more on habits…
I also feel like most of this stuff is about the conditions under which temptation resistance is bad, as though we’re decent at it by default… when we want sort of the opposite framing

Most dieters fail to control their weight: “That dieters often fail to control their weight is nearly a truism. Although more and more people are chronically dieting (Andreyeva, Long, Henderson, & Grode, 2010), obesity rates have more than doubled in the United States between 1980 and 2004 (C. L. Ogden et al., 2006). Even though dieters are often able to achieve substantial weight loss while actively dieting, most regain the lost weight in the years to follow (Mann et al., 2007; Powell, Calvin, & Calvin, 2007; Wing, 2004).”

“Without self-control, people would give in to temptation, quit when frustrated, disobey difficult instructions, or otherwise follow their automatic patterns of behaviors (Bargh & Chartrand. 1999. The Unbearable Automaticity of Being. American Psychologist.)”

– Ability to self-control requires controlling thoughts, emotions, and moods, cognitive energy and resources, managing impulses, decision making processes, and attention. In short– it’s no easy feat.
– Resisting temptation is an “ongoing and unpleasant exertion,” and the decision to “give in” is thus marked by positive rewards, both externally and mentally– feelings of relief, pleasure

-Similarly, temptation is conceived of as “a tug-of-war or conflict between impulses and self-control” … “following our impulses seems to be the simplest and most natural thing in the world”
– More candy consumed by self-regulation depletion condition than control condition, even after assessing & controlling for their dietary restraint standards
– Cognitive load predicted inability to restrain amount of chocolate eaten compared to control group
– Negative affect and managing terror, which are mentally exhausting, decreased restrain on chocolate consumption

– About 40% of deaths in Western societies are caused by long-term consequences of failure to self-regulate, resist temptations such as tobacco, sex, alcohol, other drugs, and unhealthy food (Schroeder, 2007. We can do better: Improving the health of the American people. New England J of Med)
– Experience sampling shows that over 1 week, people indicated above average desire strength for sex, social contact, among many others (food, drink, sleep, leisure). Resistance rates were below average for social contact, alcohol, media usage, and work. I.e. self-control failure is both well documented in lab studies, and now in everyday life
– Extrapolating from their findings, the authors conclude average adult spends 8 hrs a day feeling desires (half the time of waking life), 3 hours resisting, and .5 hours succumbing

Hofmann, Vohs, Baumeister. 2012. What People Desire, Feel Conflicted About, and Try to Resist in Everyday Life. Psych Science

^Same data as above: “Personality traits were prominent and significant predictors of desire strength and conflict, but personality’s effects on enactment were relatively rare and weak. In contrast, situational factors such as the mere presence of others and the presence of enactment models had no discernible main effects on desire strength and conflict, while they did have significant impact on whether people actually did what they wanted to do… personality traits having their effects on emergence of desire, and broad aspects of social situation structure coming into play later in the sequence.”

“The authors speculate that people with good self-control employ it to avoid temptations and problems, rather than relying on it to resist and solve them”

“individuals were less likely to give in to temptations when around other people, except if those people were doing exactly what the individuals were themselves trying to resist.”

A summary of findings on goal-pursuit behavior emphasizes the importance of an environment that maximizes the potential for goal-related behaviors and minimizes the potential for cueing unhealthy or undesired behaviors, in order to capitalize on automatic processing and reduce the reliance on or utilization of self-regulation resources, which are of course limited and effortful

“self control poses a significant challenge for most people. Eating better, exercising more, and inhibiting biases are by no means easy. By its very nature, self-control is effortful, with most people at pains to avoid it (Kool, McGuire, Rosen, & Botvnick, 2010).”

“According to Kuhl (2000, 2001), a person can deal with the demands of goal pursuit in two ways: One mode is conscious self-control and “is based on the suppression of many subsystems and processes to reduce the risk that any competing action tendency takes over and jeopardises the enactment of a difficult intention” (Kuhl, 2000, p. 115). In this volitional mode, inhibition of unwanted thoughts and desires is key. A dieter, for example, who relies on self-control tries to inhibit all thoughts about forbidden food items as well as the desire to give in to temptation. Unfortunately, inhibiting thoughts, feelings, and desires is often not successful in the long run (Gross & John, 2003; Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987; Wegner & Zanakos, 1994) and may be experienced as depleting (Hagger, Wood, Stiff, & Chatzisarantis, 2010). Accordingly, this volitional mode has its shortcomings.”

Henneke, Freund, 2016. Age, Action Orientation, and Self-Regulation during the Pursuit of a Dieting Goal. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being

Paper concludes: “it appears that attempts to facilitate long-term weight control by bolstering self-regulatory skills is unlikely to succeed (Lowe, 2003. Self-Regulation of Energy Intake in the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity: Is it Feasible? Obesity; 11). A superior strategy may be to bring under control the availability, portion size, and composition of food at the individual and, eventually, at the population level.”

“Do treatment and prevention programs that focus on improving self-regulation skills have the potential to sufficiently modify energy intake and energy expenditure to ameliorate or prevent obesity. On the energy intake side, it seems that in the present environment the answer is probably “no.” … Given the current obesigenic environments in developed countries, the modification of obese or obese-prone individuals’ cognitive and behavioral skills does not seem to be sufficient to produce the type of permanent lifestyle change that will foster the maintenance of weight loss or the avoidance of weight gain. As Blundell and Gillett (26) put it, “attempted self-control of behavior is frequently unreliable because it tends to oppose biological tendencies and environmental pressures.” Although long-term maintenance of substantial weight loss is sometimes achieved (47,106), this occurs in a very small proportion of those who attempt to lose weight. Similarly, educational and motivational programs aimed at the prevention of weight gain have had disappointing results (45). … A promising approach to improving weight control is to focus preventive and treatment efforts on the nature of the foods to which vulnerable individuals are exposed.” (I.E. ON THE ENVIRONMENT/TEMPTATION, NOT THE INDIVIDUAL)

As Skinner (Skinner, B. F. (1953) Science and Human Behavior The Free Press New York.) has argued, “self-control” may best be achieved by arranging the environment in a way that maximizes the likelihood that the sought-after behavior patterns will occur.

Lowe, 2003. Self-Regulation of Energy Intake in the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity: Is it Feasible? Obesity; 11

“Environmental modification”

“Resisting powerful drives to consume more calories and expend less energy than necessary requires a great deal of self-regulation effort and skill” (Appelhans BM, French SA, Pagoto SL, Sherwood NE. Managing temptation in obesity treatment: a neurobehavioral model of intervention strategies. Appetite2016;96:268–279.)”

Interventions that target the environment seem to put participants in better positions to meet their goals, rather than rely on their self-regulatory efforts and reserves. Work is also burgeoning for acceptance-based treatments versus standard behavioral treatments as a potentially more effective approach to weight-loss programs.

“Evidence also indicates that people often simultaneously hold incompatible goals, such as hedonic pleasure and long-term health, and that implicit processes favoring certain goals are strengthened in the presence of specific stimuli. For instance, the sight of a tasty food has been shown to activate hedonic motivations and behaviors (Lowe & Butryn, 2007) and other cues, such as television, are likely to engage implicit processes leading to sedentary behavior. Importantly, one is typically not aware of the processes governing one’s health behavior decisions (e.g., what to eat, whether to go to the gym; Devine, 1989; Marcus et al, 1992 ; Wadden et al, 2002; T. D. Wilson et al, 2000 ; World Health Organization, 2010). Implicit processes are likely to favor hedonic pleasure, comfort, and sedentariness over long-term objectives (Friese et al, 2008 ; Mai et al, 2011).”

Forman & Butryn 2015 A new look at the science of weight control: How acceptance and commitment strategies can address the challenge of self-regulation

– “Popular efforts to improve health behavior clearly appreciate the utility of controlling the environment to circumvent temptation: Alcoholics Anonymous advises members to avoid bars and to not keep liquor in the house; Diet programs recommend avoiding fast-food restaurants and not keep junk food at home. This lay appreciation for situation-control (manipulating the context to avoid temptation)” is referred to as lay situationism—an individual’s belief in the importance of a behavior’s context; the power of situational influence.
– “The overwhelming evidence from such investigations indicates that people’s power to exert behavior-control is limited and can be easily depleted (Muraven & Baumeister, 2000Muraven, M., & Baumeister, R. F. (2000). Self-regulation and depletion of limited resources: Does self-control resemble a muscle?Psychological Bulletin, 126(2), 247–259.[CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]; Schmeichel & Baumeister, 2004Schmeichel, B. J., & Baumeister, R. F. (2004). Self-regulatory strength. Handbook of self-regulation: Research, theory, and applications (pp. 84–98). New York, NY: Guilford Press.[Google Scholar]). Thus, in the heat of the moment, the human ability to sustain behavior-control is often inadequate, and the result is a self-regulation failure (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996Baumeister, R. F., & Heatherton, T. F. (1996). Self-regulation failure: Past, present, and future. Psychological Inquiry, 7(1), 1–15.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]).”
– “As already described, the typical self-regulation experiment places participants in a situation where the extent of temptation has been very carefully arranged. This type of paradigm creates a well-controlled but somewhat contrived scenario, and it is questionable how well it reflects what occurs in the real world (Tomiyama, Moskovich, Haltom, Ju & Mann, 2009Tomiyama, A .J., Moskovich, A., Haltom, K. B., Ju, T., & Mann, T. (2009). Consumption after a diet violation: Disinhibition or compensation?Psychological Science, 20(10), 1275–1281.[CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]). In particular, the experiments do not account for the fact that people often have some degree of situation-control. For instance, the dieter can often choose not to sit in front of the cookie tray, and the alcohol misuser can decide not to enter a bar.”
– Situationism vs Dispositionism.
– “Specifically, it seems likely that people high on situationism will more frequently use situation-control strategies, in order to circumvent temptations.”

“meta-analyses reveal that enhancing the strength of the intention to reach a given goal does improve the rate of goal attainment only to a rather small degree (Sheeran, P. (2002). Intention-behavior relations: A conceptual and empirical review. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European review of social psychology (Vol. 12, pp. 1–30). ; Webb, T. L., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Does changing behavioral intentions engender behavior change? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin,132, 249–268.).”

Recent research (e.g., Hofmann et al., 2012 –> Everyday temptations ; Finkenauer et al., 2012) showing that people with high trait self-control are more successful at self-regulation because they experience fewer temptations, but not because they are better at resisting them.

APS Report on Willpower identifies avoiding temptation as the primary strategy for managing self-control, citing the tactics taken by people in various studies to implement the “out of sight, out of mind” technique.

– In addiction literature, “we will argue that willpower or executive capacities play less of a role in successful self-control than the pursuit of strategies (i.e. avoiding temptation)” They argue that it’s more effective to exercise control over one’s environment than controlling impulses or resisting temptation.
– differences in willpower do not correlate positively with differences in trait self-control (TSC), a measure of the difference between individuals in their capacity to exercise self-control, and TSC is predictive of success in a range of domains requiring self-regulation (de Ridder, Lensvelt-Mulders, Finkenauer, Stok, & Baumeister, 2012; Muraven, Pogarsky, & Shmueli, 2006; Tangney, Baumeister, & Boone, 2004). Individuals high in TSC are significantly more vulnerable to the effects of ego depletion than those who are lower in TSC, and, conversely, individuals more than one standard deviation below the mean in TSC show virtually no effect of depletion (Imhoff, Schmidt, & Gerstenberg, 2014).
– goals may be better achieved not by effortful resistance of temptation, but by deploying strategies to ensure either that temptations are not encountered
– interviews with people in recovery from addiction show that people who seem not to be short on willpower; rather, success and goal attainment is dependent on developing strategies to preserve willpower by controlling the environment, specifically to be devoid of temptations

Psychiatrists are trending towards relinquishing the idea of willpower altogether. Which could be helpful for the future since notions of willpower are easily stigmatized- social problems could be framed as issues of personal discipline. “Willpower based moral accusations are among the easiest to sling”

The more salient a temptation, the more likely we are to succumb: “the more strongly a temptation automatically draws people’s attention, the more likely they are to fail at self-control”
“What remains largely unaddressed, however, are the processes that people engage in to avoid salient temptations in the first place…Research has repeatedly shown that when people are able to anticipate potential self-control failures, they prospectively restrict the future availability of and opportunity to indulge in temptations”
The author considers the defining feature of successful impulse inhibition to be a complete avoidance of temptation.

Fujita, 2011. On Conceptualizing Self-Control as More than the Effortful Inhibition of Impulses.

Ego depletion may be just an example of how belief drives behavior- those who believe in willpower as a limited resource are more likely to demonstrate signs of cognitive fatigue. The consistency and repliciability of ego-depletion has failed to hold up in meta-analyses, boosted by publication bias against de-confirming results.

Health Psychologist Traci Mann includes over 20 studies in her book that demonstrate no relationship between an individual’s self-control score and the amount of food they eat in a given study. https://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Eating-Lab-Science-Willpower/dp/0062329235?tag=sciofus-20

Women ate twice as much candy when they were displayed in clear containers versus opaque

High school and college students were more likely to progress towards academic and lifestyle goals if they were directed to use strategies that alter the environment, including removing or avoiding temptations (situation modification condition), than those who were directed to use cognitive strategies, like employing willpower or diverting attention (response modulation strategy). situation selection/modification is a very useful strategy for not succumbing to temptations – those are stages in the Process Model of Self Control, which expands the concept of self-control beyond the idea of an individual’s impulse resistance or willpower, the idea of a finite but renewable resource that is ego-depleting, to the idea that there is a variety of strategies, spanning both the situational and the intrapsychic levels. And the model claims that the situational strategies have superior efficacy– which has support from recent studies including the Everyday Temptations study and the Ent Baumeister Tice 2015 studies that demonstrate how successfully self controlled/self-disciplined individuals tend to use situation-selection/modification type strategies. The authors review a vast host of literature in different areas that provide preliminary support for the usefulness and efficacy of situation-based strategies over intrapsychic ones, including the realms of substance use, health behaviors (eating and exercise), academic work, and retirement savings.

Is the fact that women need to have kids by like, 40 a major thing? Is that why women want to find relationships earlier than men, so they can have a few years together before starting their families? Is this real, even today with adoption, later birth abilities, freezing eggs, etc? What will it take for women and men to have true freedom of opportunity?

What does it mean that our society, the public sphere (workplace, public institutions) is built around men’s anatomical abilities? I feel like men would say it’s cause they’re the ones that built it. Did they build it only because they were the only ones capable? Or because they controlled the means of production… why HAVEN’T women “taken control”? Different values, not being selfish, being more about the greater good/good for all rather than self-serving? Physical capabilities and differences are not the end all-be all… And the conquest mentality also means that you’re starting from the assumption that domination and control are inherently good. They might be, currently in this society, and throughout patriarchal history, valuable but that’s not a universal.

I was also thinking about abortion after the Nib comic about the woman who had 2 abortions, the 1st because she was unfit the 2nd because she doesn’t want to be a mother. I am ALL FOR women being able to abort because they don’t want to be a mother, or they don’t want to be pregnant. What about men… should they be able to opt out of being a father? I used to think it’s all about the anatomical differences- women gestate, men do not. That abortion is about not wanting to be PREGNANT. But what if you want to not be a parent? Idk, there’s something here to think about…